“Mutual Society, Help, and Comfort”

Near the end he’s got a neat little reading of a scene from Pride and Prejudice in which the absurd Mr. Collins lists three reasons for marrying and as the third, and most important, notes that “it is the particular advice and recommendation of the very noble lady whom I have the honour of calling patroness.” Wood shrewdly notes that Collins here is echoing (probably unconsciously) but also deviating from the prayer book’s marriage rite, which also lays down three reasons for institution of marriage:

First, It was ordained for the procreation of children, to be brought up in the fear and nurture of the Lord, and to the praise of his holy Name.

Secondly, It was ordained for a remedy against sin, and to avoid fornication; that such persons as have not the gift of continency might marry, and keep themselves undefiled members of Christ’s body.

Thirdly, It was ordained for the mutual society, help, and comfort, that the one ought to have of the other, both in prosperity and adversity.

Wood very nicely explains why all this is a joke on Mr. Collins, but he also thinks, far less plausibly, that it’s a critique of the prayer book itself:

Not until the priest reaches reason No. 3 does he begin to get around to what most people would imagine to be the first and best reason to marry: “for the mutual society, help, and comfort, that the one ought to have of the other.” Surely it struck the canny and satiric Jane Austen as intolerably pompous that the Church apparently prized the production of Christian children and the avoidance of fornication above the happiness of its congregants?

There are a good many unacknowledged assumptions going on here — for instance, that the placing of “mutual society, help, and comfort” in the third position indicates that it’s the least important, though, as Wood surely knows, the last place can also be the place of greatest emphasis. But I wonder also whether there’s not a lack of historical imagination here. Wood’s implicit syllogism seems to go like this: I greatly admire Jane Austen for her “canny and satiric incisiveness”; I find the prayer book’s priorities (as I understand them) “intolerably pompous”; therefore “surely” Jane Austen feels as I do about this matter.

And maybe she did. Or maybe she didn’t. Maybe she took sin more seriously than James Wood does and therefore was more likely to approve a “remedy” for it; maybe she valued “the procreation of children” more than he does. It’s unwise simply to assume that people formed in very different cultures than ours nevertheless think just as we do, sharing our preferences and priorities.

In any case, it’s worth noting that the consideration that Wood sees as being demeaned by being moved to the third place in the series was a doctrinal innovation when Thomas Cranmer added it to the first Book of Common Prayer in 1549. The medieval liturgies he drew on in creating his prayer book didn’t mention “mutual society, help, and comfort” or anything of the kind: he chose on his own initiative to add that reason, and though it was a new idea, his theological advisor Martin Bucer liked it so much that he, like James Wood, wanted it moved to the beginning of the list. (Not for the same reasons, though: he just wanted to make it clear that mutual society came before procreation in time. Or, um, was supposed to.)

Cranmer himself was married twice: first as a young scholar, to a woman he was willing to give up his Oxford fellowship to marry. But alas, she died in childbirth, as did their child. Only many years later did Cranmer marry again, and in the turmoils of that time the safety of his wife and children was an ongoing source of anxiety for him: when he saw that he himself was in danger, he had them shipped secretly off to the Continent.

In light of Cranmer’s history as a married man, we might note one other small innovation. In medieval liturgies the husband’s vow read as follows: “I [name] take thee [name] to my wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death us depart.” Cranmer added one small phrase, just before the final clause: “to love and to cherish.”

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8 Responses to “Mutual Society, Help, and Comfort”

It strikes me that this is both the great risk and the great joy of satire: it relies on assumptions about what is good, right, or logical, presumably that are so self-evident that the author need only gesture toward them. However, across differences of culture, time and ideology, it can lead to wildly different interpretations.

The BCP order would make sense if marriage had been ordained after the fall, but the Genesis account is clear that mutual society and help, at least (there’d have been no need for prelapsarian comfort), was the primary reason, and procreation the secondary. A remedy for sin would come in third. The whole world is about a Marriage, and the reasons for all of the little marriages must first of all echo the reasons for the Big One.

Putting “as a remedy for sin” first is particularly ridiculous, and plays unfortunately to our culture’s too common notion that marriage is some sort of punishment. Putting it last, after the goodies of the other two reasons, makes it clear that taking a wife isn’t in the same category as taking a trip to the woodshed.

Laughing at the order doesn’t mean belittling remedies for sin or making babies, it just means putting those reasons in their proper place.

What did Austen think of sin? Now that’s a good question!
I have some guesses, but not much textual evidence at my command for them.

On the other hand, I think she did take a pretty dark view of marriage. And this view is probably at its darkest in her depiction of the marriage that is the backdrop of the Collins quote: his marriage to Charlotte. It’s one thing that idiots like Collins marry for the most foolish and empty reasons (my patroness would approve!). It’s another that social and material survival forces non-idiots like Charlotte to submit to such wishes. Will Charlotte be able to console herself with any of Cranmer’s justifications?

“However, across differences of culture, time and ideology, it can lead to wildly different interpretations.”

You might be confusing application of those beliefs to personal and business situations. One can live on a certain ideology with respect to personal decisions, but another with how they govern their day-to-day life. In other words, one doesn’t have to be confined to a single dimension of how they live life. I think that’s the purest form of democratic freedom.

Re: the Genesis account is clear that mutual society and help, at least (there’d have been no need for prelapsarian comfort), was the primary reason, and procreation the secondary.

I don’t think we make much headway by taking isolated Old Testament verses out of context, and anyway, I’d go to natural law for my definition of marriage, rather than to Genesis. It’s pretty clear that marriage arose out of pair bonding amoung our primate relatives, and that those pair bonds existed to offer males the certainty of paternity and access to fertile females, and to offer females economic security and help with childrearing.

Or as one of Aquinas’ students writing in his name, puts it in an appendix to the Summa:

“I answer that, A joining denotes a kind of uniting, and so wherever things are united there must be a joining. Now things directed to one purpose are said to be united in their direction thereto, thus many men are united in following one military calling or in pursuing one business, in relation to which they are called fellow-soldiers or business partners. Hence, since by marriage certain persons are directed *to one begetting and upbringing of children*, and again to one family life, it is clear that in matrimony there is a joining in respect of which we speak of husband and wife; and this joining, through being directed to some one thing, is matrimony; while the joining together of bodies and minds is a result of matrimony.”

“Taking isolated Old Testament verses out of context”? Not at all. I’m saying that the purpose of the whole of Creation and the message of the whole of Scripture is The Marriage. God, out of the overflow of intra-Trinitarian love, desired to bestow that love on someone wholly other. In Genesis He makes her; throughout the Scriptures He remakes her; in the Gospels He pays her bride price; in Revelation He consummates His marriage with her.

“It’s pretty clear”? Not at all. It’s sheer conjecture based on an evolutionary theory that is more sheer conjecture. And pretty silly conjecture, at that.

There’s something simultaneously beautiful and disturbing about the BCP, though it strikes me as inherently wrong-headed on this point at least: marriage as a sacrament ought first to be understood as a means to our salvation by participation in the mystery of Christ – as St Paul puts it, an icon of the mystical unity of Christ and His Body. From that perspective, all three of these points are essentially incorrect.

Greg, your disturbance is with Anglicanism (and thus with both the BCP and Austen), which of course does not recognize marriage as a sacrament. But your point about earthly marriages being ordained to reflect the heavenly Marriage is pretty much the point I am trying to make, as well. As a Protestant I would only deny that it is a “means to our salvation.”

But if we stick to where our beliefs overlap, then how is it wrong-headed to describe the nature of the reflection of the heavenly Marriage as being designed to provide for mutual help, society, and comfort; for procreation; and as a remedy for sin? Isn’t that a fairly accurate depiction of the relationship of Christ and His bride?